Eyes Wide Shut
by markofthemoros
Summary: "You really shouldn't gaze into the abyss, for it will gaze back into you. With its amber eyes." A short one-shot inspired by the Ignis DLC teaser, and the potential aftermath of that ordeal. And it's exactly what it sounds like and c'moon, you've seen the teaser, you know what this is about. Warnings: references to torture, gruesome imagery, angst, PTSD symptoms. Nothing sexual.


**AN: First of all, I want to thank all of you who read and enjoy my stories, be it this one or my writing overall! *extends arms in a virtual hug* I feel so flattered, you have no idea! I'm so glad you're enjoying them, your feedback and knowing that there are actually people who're excited about my writing, it just warms my heart! I love how this community of ours is so giving, so loving! It's so much fun to be involved, and again, I'm honored by your love! Love you guys, too! :'3  
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 **But regarding this one. So I am looking forward to the Ignis DLC so much! I srsly wanna know exactly what happened to him, how he lost his vision. It's heart-wrenching, I felt bad for an hour after watching the teaser for the first time. TT..TT And do excuse this queen of all awkward transitions, but I had this terrible idea one night... and I was instantly like, I have to do this! It's the DLC teaser narrated, plus a little extra. I mean, someone had to have found him, right? Here's my take on that. I wanted to do this before the DLC is out, when I can still call it plausible, haha. It's not off-canon if it's not confirmed, right?**

 **Again, this is littered with almost every non-sexual warning label there is, so be cautioned. Warnings: hc angst, references to torture, sadism (can I just put down "Ardyn" and be done with this?), PTSD symptoms, gruesome imagery.**

 **The mood song for this is "Watch Me Bleed" by Scary Kids Scaring Kids. Click it on to play in the background as you start reading. And the title, it's again stolen from a movie called Eyes Wide Shut, but I just couldn't help myself.**

 **Beta read by Elillierose.**

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Eyes Wide Shut

You shouldn't gaze into the abyss, for the abyss will gaze back into you.

It hurt. Although not prone to voicing his suffering, regrettably it didn't make Ignis any more sustainable to it. Heavens knew he wished it did.

His intermitted, trembling pants were washed away by the rain as it poured down on them, lashing against his face in cold needles. From somewhere out of his scope he heard running steps, but they weren't coming closer, they were merely passing them by. Heavy thumps of boots. Boots just like the ones holding him down.

An ungraceful gasp of pain left him as the metal dug deeper into his thigh. His spread leg was cramping for being restrained in the difficult position for so long; he twitched, an instinctive attempt to relieve the ache, and immediately there was an added pressure in the back of his neck, forcing him down. A silent threat, a promise of consequence if he got any clever ideas. His throat ground against the concrete painfully, scraping skin and squeezing his windpipe; he struggled to breathe around it, shallow, rapid pants.

Noct. Where was Noct? He had to go to him. He tried to wriggle, to loosen the strain in his upper back, but it ended up working exactly the opposite. The muscles of Ignis' left arm felt like they had caught on fire as his wrist was cruelly yanked closer to the base of his skull. Small sounds betraying his agony slipped out from behind his clenched teeth.

He stilled when he heard the unmistakable sound of an assault rifle getting rounded. Cold tremors that had nothing to do with his rain-soaked form ran up and down his spine and legs, his teeth chattered a little. His breaths grew fluttery with the fear, with the anticipation as he braced himself for the pain and the silence. But that pain never came.

The soldier crouching by his head jerked, as if to look behind him. From this angle, Ignis didn't see what the man saw, but the form vanished suddenly, allowing Ignis to rest his narrowing eyes on the haughty figure of Ardyn Izunia as the man strolled closer, a predatory look in his eyes, and on his lips, a smirk that seemed to widen a fraction with every step he took. The devil himself, an incarnation of the very abyss.

And Ignis had never been more scared in his life.

His head was smashed down, an armored hand holding him still. Ardyn came to stand directly above him, and gazed down, his face pure malice and dark delight as he took it all in. The flicker of terror in the one sparkling gem visible to him, the subtle trembling of his bound hand. The way the adviser's lips pulled into an agonized snarl as his arm was forced deeper into his spine. And Izunia's voice was practically purring as he spoke almost gently,

"…"

So soft. So venomous. Ignis could have sworn his heart stopped for a sliver of time at those words. 'No…!' Unnatural coldness grew in his chest, spreading over the strained limbs; how anything could possibly scorch and freeze at the same time was beyond Ignis at that moment. 'No!' He could feel the snarl on his quivering lips falter with that stomach-turning promise. 'Please!' Wild tremors coursed through him, earning him another slash of burning on his arm and upper back as his arm was stretched almost too far; the sound he made was strangled and hoarse. But his eye, his one visible eye was desperately looking for an opening. A crack. A weakness. A sign of hesitation. That playful flicker of a gamble. Anything. What he met made Ignis' head spin with the urge to vomit.

Satisfaction. Eagerness. The will to see him suffer.

Ignis' blood ran cold as the brutal realization came over:

The sick fuck wanted this.

Ignis' chest heaved, his pants frantic and panicked; an instinct told him to struggle, to fight, to flee, but the thrashing was crushed out of him by the heavy boot landing in his upper back. The air left him, his body going slack as his vision spun; there was a ringing, a ringing in his ears, distant and fading. And as he laid limp with the only effort to draw some desperately needed air into his abused lungs, it took a moment for the taste to register. A flavor foreign to his trained palette. Texture of it thick and sticky. An involuntarily gasp slipped out as he realized what it was. The wavering sparkling gem cracked open to gaze back at the man. No, not a man. A monster. The manifestation of the very Hell itself. You really shouldn't gaze into the abyss, for it will gaze back into you. With its amber eyes.

"…" That menace smiled down at him – a razor-edge smile that sealed his fate – before he stepped back to give room to the men holding the doomed man down. His lips moved, Ignis heard him saying something to the soldiers; the rest was drowned under his own screaming as the metal made contact.

.

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.

.

"Eaargh!" It was with a heavy growl that Gladiolus willed into his muscles the strength to move the boulder. A solid mass the size of a man, the burnt odor still lingering around it. His hands trembling from the exertion, it was thrown aside just enough for a man to pass through. "Ignis?!"

"Iggy, where are you?!"

He ran. Down an alley in what used to be the administrative district of the once exuberant city, now a pile of rubble, ash and dust in the wake of the devastation of the Tidemother's fury.

"Iggy?!" A degree of panic seeped into his voice, his calls growing more urgent in tone and frequent in number. He had lost contact with the adviser more than two hours ago. In the midst of a war zone, two hours was a long time.

A long time to bleed out. A long time to suffer alone. A long time to lay dead under a pile of–

Gladiolus gave himself a mental slap for letting thoughts like those even cross his mind. But he couldn't help it. Ignis hadn't copied for more than two hours.

Ignis never _not_ copied for more than twenty minutes. "Iggy?!"

Where was he?! He was sure Ignis was assigned for this part of the city. They were supposed to report in when the evacuation had been completed. Ignis hadn't copied for two hours!

He was almost through the street, the first thoughts of moving onto the next evacuation zone just eating their way into his mind when a familiar-looking color caught his eye. Behind a smashed-in telephone booth, Gladiolus saw a glimpse of the adviser's dark purple dress shirt.

The man's heart skipped a beat at the sight, a gasp leaving him in his unguarded stupor. Ignis was lying on the ground, limp and unmoving. No, wait! He was moving. Dragging himself forth with his right hand and legs only; the left hung by his side as dead weight. A useless piece of meat attached to the shoulder. And the trail of red the man left behind him was more than unsettling.

Gladiolus dashed. Not a moment more to lose, he dashed for the adviser, a deep-rooted fear for his friend clenching his heart. But it was Ignis' reaction that brought the man to an abrupt halt. For the very second his steps had turned into running, Ignis had visibly flinched. He had seen the red-smeared cheek as the head had turned towards the direction of the sound, a gesture like one of a wild animal when it notices an approaching danger, and… Ignis had tried to flee. His movement had become jerky and panicky as he had tried to crawl away–

"Iggy?" he forced his voice to reach the man; he had taken into jogging now, choosing to take the risk of frightening him further. It would be the lesser evil. Mercifully, Ignis had gone still at the recognition of the voice. "Iggy?!" Gladiolus was on his knees by his side in roughly half a heartbeat. The man before him was shaking uncontrollably, his injured hand clasped over the left side of his face whereas the good arm tried to push him onto his knees. A trail of fresh blood trickled down his cheek to speckle the ground. Hissing, agonized breaths heaved through grit teeth.

"Gla-dio…" It was hardly louder than a sigh, and so fragile, and the said man's heart broke at the sound of that. Ignis didn't sound like that.

"Iggy. Let me see it." Ignis' reply was a shuddery breath of mortification, and instead of complying, he turned to hide his face further, the action like a fiery arrow straight into the shield's chest. "Iggy." His reply were soft, pained whimpers the man couldn't quite hold back anymore.

A darker shade of determination settled over the shield's face. "I'm sorry, Iggy," he almost grunted, before grabbing a hold of the left arm splayed over Ignis' face, eliciting a cry from the other.

Ignis's support arm very nearly gave out on him at the sudden jerking motion. If it wasn't for the strong hold someone – Gladio, most likely – had on him, he would have tumbled face first into the unknown. An option he still would have considered, though, if it were up to him; for the touch of calloused fingers on his cheek brought forward a new surge of searing, scorching fire, like his skin was caressed with a whip dipped in acid. "Eagh!" An instinct had him thrashing, trying to flee from this foreign pain as he smacked the offending hand away.

"Iggy…?" his tone was a mere whisper. His eyes like saucers, the first tugs of nausea building in his stomach, he stared at the crusting blood on the adviser's cheek, his hand still hovering mere inches from touching. There were cuts across his nose and mouth, too. But what was most prominent was the swollen and splotchy skin around his eyes. The raw flesh was darkened, wetness glimmering under the unburst blisters where the skin had burnt beyond repair. Ignis' breaths were shuddering pants through grit teeth as he tried to ride out the worst of it. And Gladiolus knew before the words had time to formulate in his hazed mind.

"You can't see…" He wanted to kick himself at the enraged hiss coming from the other. He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but the words had rolled from his tongue on their own accord. Ignis' blind snarl was ways to the left of its mark, but it didn't take eye contact to feel the waves of chagrin radiating from the adviser.

"I'll be fine… after… some medical attention," he ground out from behind clenched teeth. "My condition… is… of no importance… Where's… Noct?! Gladio… tell me… tell me he's safe." The shield's face twisted with a grimace before settling onto a sad look,

"He's out cold, but alive." It was something about the older man's tone that had Ignis' breath hitching; the shield wasn't done talking. "Not all were that lucky."

"Prompto?!" The sound was as shocked as it was pained, the strategist's face morphing into that of mourning despite his pain. Without thinking, Gladiolus simply shook his head.

"Lady Lunafreya."

"Perished?"

"Yeah."

"And I… I suppose… Noct… doesn't… know?"

"I dunno. They were found lying next to each other," he said lowly, the amber gaze cast down. Then, as if he'd just remembered something important, his eyes snapped back to the severely injured man in front of him, and with newly found energy, he made a move to rise. "C'mon. Let's get you inside." As carefully as he could, he gathered the broken man from the ground, and propping his good arm over his shoulder to support most of his weight, they slowly started for the temporary safe haven of the first secretary's quarters.

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 **AN2: I'm sorry!**


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